An Apple a Day...

So after a few weeks of Genesis-filled class time, we've moved on to some of the contemporary feminist representations of the story. I'm particularly fond of Michelene Wandor's "Gardens of Eden," especially the opening poem, "Eve in the Morning."

So God created man (sic) in his (sic) own image?

'Male and female he created them' Genesis 1:27

Look
it was only a tree, for God's sake
a nice tree
nice shade, green leaves
an apple

You eat one apple and they remember you forever; you
only want to be left in peace, make
chutney, compote, dried apple rings
on a string

a snake? don't be silly
knowledge? you read too many Good Books
naked? so I like the sun. I tan easy.

Hava. Eve. Me (3)

The poem continues, but this is the part that strikes me as being especially emblematic of the Revisionist Mythology movement in feminist women's writing, particularly in poetry. I'm particularly fond of the opening line; the "(sic)" is an editorial indication that the original text being quoted contained an error - though usually reserved for a spelling or punctuation error, I find it rather poignant that Wandor uses it in this case. She not only questions the gender of deity, but also of whether it was man, woman, or both that were supposedly created in the image of god. It also implies that, ideologically, the entire conception of patriarchal dominance and authority is drawn from human error in Biblical narrative.
I also like the way Wandor has Eve minimize the Fall itself - "Look / it was only a tree, for God's sake" - by reducing the importance of the Tree of Knowledge. The almost neglectful way Eve says "for God's sake" - though clearly Wandor's use of the phrase is very deliberate - downplays the 'sin' of eating the fruit and practically scoffs at the way the temptation is figured in Genesis (and in subsequent texts, like Milton's Paradise Lost).
Wandor's Eve is also very domestic (in contrast to Lilith, the other figure in the sequence "Gardens of Eden," who is exotic, sexual, powerful, and worldly), desiring to make "chutney, compote, dried apple rings / on a string." However, domestication - the language of cooking - is also a tool of minimization; the "apple" is symbolically reduced from a signifier of sin and feminine weakness in regards to temptation, becoming instead a series of foods: things to be consumed in comfort, things which are homey, things that have no mythic significance whatsoever. Eve's domestication of the Genesis myth laughs in the face of the serious and somber temptation and Tree, creating instead an image of domestic simplicity that is nevertheless both intelligent and witty, empowering Eve as woman, as mother, and as autonomous speaker.